Miles Kington
Miles Kington (born 1941) is a British journalist and jazz musician. He was born in Northern Ireland (where his father, a soldier, was then posted) and studied Modern Languages at Trinity College, Oxford.
He began his career at the now defunct satirical magazine Punch, where he spent some 15 years. It was during this time, in the late 1970s, that he began writing Let's Parler Franglais!. Written in a comical mixture of English and French, these short sketches purporting to be a study course took as their raison d'être the undeniable fact that "les Français ne parlent pas le O-level français" ("the French do not speak O-level French"). They were later published as a series of books (Let's Parler Franglais!, Let's Parler Franglais Again, Let's Parler Franglais One More Temps, and so on).
A lover of jazz since boyhood, he plays the double bass (and other instruments) and was for many years the bass player of the cabaret quartet Instant Sunshine. He has now moved away from London and works from his home near Bath.
He currently writes a popular humour column for the UK newspaper The Independent.
Regular topics for this include
- The answers to a Christmas quiz that was never printed
- Fictional court reporting
- Jazz
- Motorway Ballads
- Proceedings of the United Deities
- Spot the fictional news story
- Things for which there is no word
